Excerpted from Chapter 14

Is rock ‘n’ roll now an agent of change? It can be. It depends very much on what the performer wants and what the individual listener wants. Sometimes we think we want change but in fact we only want the feeling of it, the release, an exciting night of rebellion and then back the same bleak reassuring familiarity in the morning. Heavy metal is a music of ritualized barrier-smashing, in which the icons of rock ‘n’ roll—the guitar solo, the scream, the riff, the superficial outrage—are elevated to the status of high theater, an opportunity for a frenzied, ecstatic release of aggression; break down the walls, but they’re always only prop walls within a larger, untouchable, immovable prison. It’s an opportunity for those who perceive themselves as powerless to have an experience of power, without actually taking any risks.

When I was 17 I loved the Yardbirds for the exact same musical and visceral reasons that teenagers today love the Scorpions or Metallica or Motley Crüe or AC/DC—indeed it was almost the same music, heavy loud blues-based kinetic rock ‘n’ roll, slashing guitars, hot solos, crashing drums. The difference, if any, was that the Yardbirds didn’t know what they were doing; it was an experiment, a process of discovery. When they did stumble into something big they barely recognized it, moved on to try something else, and left it to their successors to refine the sound and the style and make fortunes, make history.

Today most heavy metal bands know exactly what they’re doing—some do it better than others, but still the rules of the form have been established, they can be stretched in many directions (Van Halen has been particularly clever) but they cannot be violated. This is not a music of hope, and in no way is it a music of real freedom, because it firmly rejects the possibility of actual change. Women are ritualistically trampled on in the lyrics because the male musicians and fans feel frustrated by the power women have to dominate them; but a world in which that domination did not occur would be a world in which there would be no satisfaction in striking back, and much worse, a world in which a man would be responsible for his own life and decisions. Female fans similarly enjoy both the pedestal they’re placed on and the ritualized degradation, because in both cases it promises security. In sadomasochism, the essential truth is that both parties are dominated; neither has nor desires freedom. Heavy metal is a music that resonates with those who feel powerless, dominated—it allows them the experience of responding to, reacting against, triumphing over, and even annihilating the oppressor, without threatening them with any possibility of actual confrontation or real change.

I suspect that for many people today heavy metal is an exciting way station on their rock ‘n’ roll journey, a place where much of the power and joy of the music can be found, but that gets left behind when the heart starts asking for more and deeper and discovers all it’s ever offered is more of the same. At this point some fans may move away from rock ‘n’ roll altogether, or retreat into pop music and radio’s generic “album rock,” or continue to hold the excitement of heavy metal in a sort of nostalgic regard while no longer really participating. Some will stay true to heavy metal forever. And some will go on to seek elsewhere in the rock universe the kind of passion and commitment that heavy metal expressed for them until they exhausted it. The last group are the people who wish rock ‘n’ roll to be, and therefore allow it be, a personal and collective agent of change.

Every genre of rock ‘n’ roll, not just heavy metal, produces a certain proportion of committed fans who expand beyond their original interest to go looking for whatever they can find anywhere in the music, past and present (but with an emphasis on present, I think; the past is too easy a place to hide), that will offer them something alive and unexpected, something to which they can give in return. In this way rock ‘n’ roll encourages self-awareness and supports and stimulates personal growth. What the listener offers in return is his or her time and attention, the most sincere gifts anyone can give.

I notice I’ve made a lot of generalizations, about heavy metal in particular, even though I just finished saying that generalization works against what gives rock ‘n’ roll its power. My generalizations may be useful in that they illustrate the kind of thoughts I have about how rock ‘n’ roll now is and isn’t an agent of change. But taken at face value, they could also be distorting and destructive, so what I ask you to remember is, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

This is true. I know very little about heavy metal. For that matter, by the standards of a true fan, I also know very little about Hüsker Dü, and only about a moderate amount about U2, Springsteen, the Grateful Dead. Not that knowledge is so important—but the destructive quality of generalizations comes from the illusion on the part of those who hear ‘em that they’re based on knowledge. They’re not—and this applies even to history, science, philosophy. Generalizations are always an intuitive leap (sometimes accurate, sometimes pure hogwash), and what they’re based on, in a word, is attitudes. Obviously I have an attitude about heavy metal. But if that makes you think I know something, that would be too bad, because it could get in the way of your willingness to go and check out the scene yourself. Expose a person to enough generalizations, enough negative attitudes, and he’d never feel like checking out anything that’s happening out there, and that I believe is exactly what kept me and what’s kept most of us from experiencing the richness and variety of present-day rock ‘n’ roll.

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